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College enrollment surged during the recession, but as the job
market continues to recover, albeit slowly and shakily, fewer new
high school graduates are continuing on with their education.

More than a third of the nearly 3 million students who graduated
from high school last year were not enrolled in college by the
fall, according to a Labor Department report released Tuesday.

At 65.9 percent, college enrollment among new high school
graduates is at its lowest percentage in a decade, down from 66.2
percent last year, and significantly down from a peak of
approximately 70 percent in 2009.

Why are high school graduates passing on college? The
increasingly ridiculous cost of an education is certainly a
factor, but probably not the main explanation (while enrollment
is down at two-year post-secondary programs, it's actually up at
traditional four-year institutions, where tuition tends to be the
priciest).

It's not because they're lazier, either. Instead, as the job
market continues to recover, new graduates are choosing work over
additional schooling -- those not enrolled in college in October
2013 were more than twice as likely as those who were enrolled to
be working or looking for work, the report finds (74.2 percent
compared with 34.1 percent).

The
March jobs report shows that the unemployment rate among
workers age 25 and up who did not attend college was 6.3 percent.
That's nearly double the 3.4 percent unemployment rate among
workers with at least a four-year bachelor's degree.

And according to a recent Pew study, the unemployment rate for
millennials (age 25 to 32) with a bachelor's degree or higher
was a third of what it was for those with only a high school
diploma (3.8 compared to 12.1). In addition, a college
education translated into a significantly more money per year
(an average annual income of $45,000 versus $28,000).

Turns out, going to college still pays. It's too bad, then, that
many young people feel they can't afford it.

As the cost of attending college continues to skyrocket at a pace
that far outstrips inflation – tuition and fees at community
colleges alone have risen 24 percent beyond overall inflation
over the past five years -- and the job market continues
to recover, it's easy to see why for young people straight out
of high-school, choosing to pay for additional education over
making money seems like an increasingly unrealistic option.

In an annual survey of around 14,000 students and their families,
roughly 90 percent said financial aid was going to be "very or extremely
necessary," Robert Franek, senior vice president and
publisher of The Princeton Review, told CNBC. It's a number, he
added, that "has continued to ratchet up since 2009" when that
statistic first began appearing in the values book.

For many low-income students, going to college means working
through college. Of the high school graduates who went to a
four-year institution, only 27.8 percent also participated in the
labor force. For graduates in a two-year program, however, that
number jumped to 45.2 percent.

What's the solution, then? How can we make going to college a
more realistic option for high school seniors? Legislatures in
Michigan believe they have an
answer, proposing that instead of collecting tuition, a ‘pay
it forward’ paradigm would be introduced through which students
would have to pledge a fixed percentage of their eventual
earnings to a dedicated fund.